GPUG Amplify 2018 Rewind by David Gersten
The 3rd Annual GPUG Amplify conference took place last week and it was the 3rd year we have participated and for so many reasons this may have been the best year, yet! Of course, the previous two years, being only miles from our office, had positive points, but this last week’s event was amazing!
Perhaps because I knew registration was lower this year than in the past and the fact that only one of our customers were making the trek out to Chicago, I was a little cynical (or wary) about how the event was going to be but in retrospect, I think that is what made the event so invaluable.
As many people know, I am all about COMMUNITY and PARTNERING. Confirmed in front of a room of almost 50 partners, during my Partner Exchange presentation “Why Engaging with Microsoft & Other Microsoft Partners Now Makes More Sense Than Ever” the Dynamics community as a whole, and the GP community in itself, is a strong, close community and one that people should leverage and thrive in. This message was also delivered in the 2nd session I was kindly invited to participate in by Abra Gilman, “Partner/ISV Relationships Making Smooth Music Together”.
The feedback online and in person from the sessions were positive. People stopped me in the halls and break out areas all week to talk about how partnering can work and how amazing this community is. This type of feedback in itself made the event worth the investment.
The entire event was about learning, networking, and growing the business myself and as a professional. This is what was happening from the moment I was on the stage during the Keynote of the Partner Exchange sharing about the Channel Marketing Alliance, to the dinners with partners and customers, through the 16 sessions I attended, the many ISV booths I spent time at, and the hallway conversations that took place.
The fact that there were fewer than 400 people (not confirmed yet) including the top partners (VARs), the best ISVs and committed customers, made this event very special. I was able to spend time with each group (Partners, ISVs, Customers, DCI Staff) more strategically at Amplify, than ever before at other conferences. Fewer distractions and a smaller crowd allowed us to all be more focused, transparent, and authentic. I know that from my client’s feedback of their new proposed projects, the partnerships we established, the new ISV products we will begin to offer, and the overall visibility BCS gained at the conference…this event’s investment will definitely pay off!
Bond Consulting Services, a committed Dynamics partner, is happy to support GPUG Amplify as it continues to find its identity! We look forward to attending the next one!
GPUG Amplify Session Recap | Why Engaging with Microsoft & Other Microsoft Partners Now Makes More Sense Than Ever
Monday, March 19, 2018 – Bond Consulting Services’ Vice President of Sales and Marketing, David Gersten, is at GPUG Amplify, presenting two sessions at the Partner Exchange. GPUG Amplify is a conference for Microsoft Dynamics GP leaders and users to network and exchange knowledge on how to maximize Dynamics GP performance to achieve business success. The Partner Exchange is a Microsoft Partner-only event preceding the User Group conference, that provides executive product insight, best practices, and functional topics around Dynamics GP.
In his first session, titled “Why Engaging with Microsoft & Other Microsoft Partners Now Makes More Sense Than Ever,” Gersten explains the many reasons why partnering with Microsoft is business-critical. He maintains that businesses existing as isolated “islands,” are missing out on the synergy created by partnering with both Microsoft and other MS partners.
“It was such a pleasure sharing with other Dynamics Partners about the tools and strategies that make BCS successful. I recognized during the discussion that many partners have the will to engage Microsoft and other Partners to help grow and build their practices, but just don’t always know the way. I am always glad to help.” - David Gersten
Microsoft helps you build your practice around Dynamics GP by offering add-on solutions that set Dynamics GP apart from other siloed ERP systems. Dynamics GP integrates with Power BI, Power Apps, Azure, Office365, Flow/Bookings, and Dynamics 365…just to name a few. In addition to the solutions businesses can integrate with Dynamics GP, Microsoft also offers partners numerous programs to guarantee success. Partner Incentives, Azure Everywhere, Cloud Sure Step, Cloud Mentor, Dynamics Learning Portal, and One Commercial Partner represent just a few of these programs.
Gersten encourages businesses to engage with the following organizations to jump-start your partnering success:
- Microsoft Partner Network – https://partner.microsoft.com/en-US/
- Microsoft Community - https://www.microsoftpartnercommunity.com
- Channel Marketing Alliance – www.channelmarketingalliance.com
- Any of the UGs – www.gpug.com , www.axug.com, www.navug.com, www.crmug.com
- International Association of Microsoft Channel Partners (IAMCP) – www.iamcp.org
- ProVisors – www.provisors.com
- Local Chamber of Commerce
- Business Network International (BNI) – www.bni.com
Have questions? Connect with David or send him an email!
The Wait for Dynamics 365 Business Central is OVER!
For the past year, Microsoft has been teasing a new product, code-named, “Tenerife.” The wait is finally over and the new product has been officially announced; introducing: Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, generally available beginning April 2nd. Business Central offers organizations a single, end-to-end solution for managing finances, operations, sales, and customer service. The spring release of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is a great opportunity for businesses to easily and affordably upgrade their entry-level accounting software and legacy ERP systems.
Like all of Microsoft’s business solutions, Business Central integrates with the rest of Microsoft’s cloud service offerings, including Office 365, PowerApps, Microsoft Flow, and Power BI.
Business Central brings the full power of Dynamics NAV to the cloud and a shared code-base ensures complete consistency between both on premises and cloud versions, making transitioning to the cloud seamless. As a single, end-to-end application, Business Central offers:
- Business without silos | Unify your business and boost efficiency with automated tasks and workflows, integrated within the Office tools you already love like Outlook, Word, and Excel
- Actionable Insights | Achieve greater outcomes and gain a complete view of your business with connected data, business analytics, and guidance delivered by Microsoft’s leading intelligent technologies
- Solutions built to evolve | Start quickly, grow at your own pace, and adapt in real time with a flexible platform that makes it easy to extend Business Central based on your changing business needs
For more information on the Spring release and general availability, please contact sales@lime-falcon-860444.hostingersite.com or visit Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central
Create Static Marketing Lists in Dynamics 365
A Static marketing list is a stand-alone marketing list that has to be managed manually.
- On the Navigation Bar, select the arrow to the right of the displayed module
- Select Marketing and click on Marketing Lists
- Click on the New button at the top left
- Enter a Name for your Marketing List
- Choose the Targeted At. Select either Contact or Account based on the List you are trying to create. Please note that this cannot be changed once the record is saved. Meaning, if you choose to target accounts, you will only be able to add members of the same type
- Select Static in Type. Note this cannot be changed once the record is saved
- Save
- Click Manage Members at the top of the window
- Choose an option to add members to the list
- Selecting Lookup lets you add members one by one
- Choosing Advanced Find lets you add members based on specific criteria
Adding Members to an existing Static Marketing List
- On the Navigation Bar, select Sales and go to a list of Contacts, Leads, or Accounts. Note that you can only add the record type associated with the marketing list
- Check the box next to the record(s) you would like added
- Click Add to Marketing List
- Choose the Marketing List you would like to add to
Manufacturing Transformed
“The future of manufacturing will be defined by the quality of investments companies are making today.” – Microsoft
Successful manufacturers today care about integrated digital and physical visibility, increased efficiency, additional flexibility, and lower costs. They want to connect equipment and factories, leveraging data from the factory floor to the customer call center to improve every aspect of their operations.
Digitization, or digital transformation, is fundamentally changing the way manufacturers do business, enabling a customer-centric approach while optimizing operations. Digitally empowered manufacturers engage customers throughout the product lifecycle from design to field service. They sell value-add services to complement product sales, opening new revenue streams and strengthening customer relationships.
The Bond Consulting Services' vision for supporting digital manufacturing, embraces the seismic shifts in the industry today. We offer solutions that provide a unified and flexible approach across the office and production floor processes. The approach enables transformation in six distinct ways:
- Optimize supply chain operations through better visibility and collaboration - By collecting, integrating, and visualizing global supply chain data worldwide, manufacturers gain better visibility into their operations from production to sales.
- Streamline the management of assets, products, and production - With a consolidated view that unifies process oversight and provides real-time insight, manufacturers can institutionalize efficiency gains and use connected devices to monitor and resolve issues remotely.
- Engage customers in powerful new ways – this approach is built on a combination of predictive analytics, the ability to deliver value-added services at scale, and guided or self-directed service that’s relevant to customer needs.
- Transform service centers into profit centers - Thanks to the ever-decreasing cost of IoT sensors, sophisticated mobile devices, and cloud-based data aggregation, manufacturers can improve service quality and margins by offering remote monitoring and proactive maintenance services that supplement break/fix support. By more intelligently coordinating technicians equipped with mobile and virtual reality tools, companies can leverage existing expertise and minimize costly engagements.
- Accelerate innovation for a competitive edge – The best way for manufacturers to pursue innovation is to understand their business more deeply, from customer usage through supply chain sourcing and production. With IoT-enabled parts, assets, and products, manufacturers can gain the insights needed to innovate. Data from connected products and equipment can empower developers, engineers, and technicians to collaborate.
- Empower employees to work more effectively - When a company can provide 360-degree views of customer assets and work order history, technicians are empowered by a better understanding of not only the job in front of them, but of other similar and successful field service engagements. This goes hand in hand with empowering service agents to provide instant feedback, using machine learning to find and follow similar cases for successful troubleshooting, and scheduling a visit or evaluation.
Contact us today to learn more about transforming your productivity without transforming your warehouse!
Important Dynamics GP Updates
GP Tax Update Alert
Just in case you missed it, the new Payroll tax updates are out for Dynamics GP for the new tax bill. Review this document to better understand the changes and what they mean for your business. It is also live on the automatic tax engine ready for you to install. The deadline to start using the new tax rates is February 15, 2018. Please contact us if you have any questions or need any assistance.
Here are additional resources for you records and review:
https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/2018-withholding-tables-now-available
https://mbs.microsoft.com/customersource/northamerica/GP/downloads/tax-regulatory-updates/TUGP2018
2018 Tax Round 2
Kentucky
Mississippi
Missouri
Rhode Island
Federal - 1036 Release
Support for GP 2013 is ending in April
Mainstream Support for Microsoft Dynamics GP 2013 will end on 4/10/2018 which means, if you are on GP 2013 at that point in time, you will no longer receive tax and year end updates for that version from Microsoft. Microsoft’s Lifecycle Policy of all of the Dynamics GP versions can be located here. BCS will continue to support this version as we do with ALL Dynamics GP versions, although for many reasons we recommend you to consider an upgrade sooner than later. Please contact us to discuss the efforts required and the benefits of upgrading your GP solution.
Dynamics 365 for Marketing public preview is now available
Basic email marketing got you down? Growing a businesses takes more than basic email marketing tools to turn your prospects into meaningful business relationships.
Microsoft released Dynamics 365 for Marketing in public preview for organizations seeking a marketing automation solution to generate more demand and drive more sales.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Marketing is designed as the front end of the sales cycle to help companies nurture more sales-ready leads, align sales and marketing and make smarter decisions. Most importantly, Dynamics 365 for Marketing works together with Dynamics 365 for Sales on the same platform, aligning teams with common data, connected processes and Office 365 collaboration tools.
With Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Marketing, marketers can seamlessly:
- Generate more leads from multi-channel campaigns across email, landing pages, webinars, phone calls, in person events, LinkedIn and more. New customizable templates for emails and landing pages help you create campaign content quickly. And with a dedicated email marketing service, you can get the word out reliably.
- Nurture more sales-ready leads by personalizing the buyer’s journey that guides your leads to next best experience based on their engagement.
- Target the right audience using embedded intelligence capabilities like dynamic segmentation. With multiple lead scoring models you can prioritize the leads that are ready to buy. Automated insights can help you track how your leads are engaging during your campaigns.
- Organize events with ease using the event portal to manage in-person events and integration with webinar providers.
- Track and improve marketing performance using built-in dashboards. Run surveys from the application that help you better understand your customers.
As we’ve said before, we’re committed to delivering continued innovation in Dynamics 365 for customers and partners of all sizes, and for any varying degree of business complexity.
For organizations seeking a marketing automation solution with features that extend beyond basic email marketing, we encourage you to try the free public preview for Dynamics 365 for Marketing.
Using SPS Commerce with Dynamics GP
Microsoft Dynamics GP is a vital tool for your business, but did you know that it can become even more valuable solution? When Microsoft Dynamics GP is integrated with EDI, you can automate your supply chain to gain efficiencies, cut costs and scale your business.
What is EDI?
EDI stands for Electronic Data Interchange. EDI is a combination of both a system and processes that gives businesses the capability of exchanging documents and transactional communications among trading partners in an electronic format. For example, a retailer can send a purchase order (PO) to a vendor digitally through EDI rather than send a paper document or fax. Through the power of automation, all documents are standardized to every trading partner, receiving exactly the information they need, in the format they require.
A wide variety of business and transactional documents can be standardized and exchanged via EDI:
- Invoices
- Purchase orders (POs)
- Credit adjustments
- Purchase order acknowledgements (POAs)
- Purchase order changes
- Advanced ship notices (ASNs)
- And more
EDI automation reduces or eliminates the need for paper documents and prevents transactions from getting lost in processing. It can eliminate manual data entry and processing needs, along with decreasing expensive human errors, as well as defend against improper documentation and fraud.
Integrated EDI automation helps with the complex order management cycles associated with an omnichannel retail strategy. EDI can help facilitate communication of orders, from the moment they are received through whatever fulfillment model is required -- a shipment sent to an end consumer, a trading partner customer, sent from a retailer’s distribution center, drop shipped from a vendor and other methods.
SPS Commerce EDI and Dynamics GP
SPS Commerce and Microsoft Dynamics GP are a match made in the cloud. In fact, Microsoft Dynamics GP was an ERP SPS began working with very early in the company’s EDI transformation.
SPS Commerce was the pioneer in cloud-based EDI, redefining and disrupting a market that was traditionally served by on-site, in-house EDI departments. Over the years, SPS Commerce products have moved beyond EDI as well, becoming experts at software and system integrations, analytics, item sourcing and product content management capabilities. SPS now offer solutions for retailers, suppliers, distributors, grocers and 3PLs/logistics. As a result, our network of trading partners is the largest in the business, with more than 70,000 connections worldwide.
More than 1,000 Microsoft Dynamics GP users trust SPS Commerce with their EDI needs. SPS has been working with Dynamics GP for over 17 years, developing an expertise in how to smoothly implement integrations. Our dedicated support teams keep GP users connected to all of their trading partners, including 3PLs, brokers, carriers and other supply chain partners.
Furthermore, SPS Commerce solutions can connect your Dynamics GP system to more tools within your business. Silos that exist between your ERP, WMS, CMS and other systems can be eliminated with an integrated EDI solution from SPS.
Curious to learn more about what to expect when you integrate Dynamics GP with EDI? Click here!
Ready to automate processes within your order management system and supply chain? SPS Commerce is ready to help you with your Microsoft Dynamics GP system.
Author Bio:
Theresa Putzier, Sr. Channel Manager, SPS Commerce
Theresa manages Microsoft Dynamics partnerships for SPS Commerce, the leading cloud provider of EDI services focusing on omnichannel retail supply chains. Her passion is developing lasting business relationships with ERP implementation partners, VARs, ISV’s and SaaS providers, specializing in Dynamics GP.
Microsoft Relationship Sales solution
Microsoft Relationship Sales combines LinkedIn Sales Navigator and Dynamics 365 for Sales
Foster your customer relationships with Microsoft Relationship Sales—combining LinkedIn Sales Navigator and Dynamics 365 for Sales. Unify your social and sales data to identify the right leads and connect with them through personalized engagement.
Build relationships with the right people
Increase win rates by finding key decision makers from over 500 million LinkedIn members. Then identify the best way to reach and connect with them, including introductions from colleagues that they know and trust.
- Focus on the right people with predictive lead scoring
- Find every member of the buying committee
- Discover the best path to reach each buyer for a stronger response
Offer insights and recommendations
Develop trust with your buyers. Engage them with recommendations centered on actual needs, while using relevant insights to evaluate opportunities and proactively focus on relationship areas that may need extra attention.
- Identify relationship risks and opportunities for a clear picture of the customer relationship
- Keep track of buyers and their needs with contextual alerts
- Engage buyers with personalized content
Engage at scale
Through a unified view of your relationships, get contextual information and data-driven insights to efficiently navigate the sales process and move the relationship forward—no matter what stage buyers are at.
- Synchronize relevant relationship data across LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Dynamics 365, and Office 365
- Successfully navigate the sales process with contextual guidance and help
- Recommend the next best action to nurture relationships
Learn more about the capabilities of the comprehensive Microsoft Relationship Sales solution and contact us today!
Binary Stream Guest Blog | Does your business need more than the out-of-the-box billing capabilities of GP?
The ability to quickly and accurately bill your customers is essential to any business. While Dynamics GP does have functionality in this area, it wasn’t giving us all the tools we needed....so we built our own solution: the Subscription Billing Suite, to expand GP's functionality. Here are four specific challenges that it solves:
Complex Billing Scenarios
Our product gives you the ability to build a billing schedule for each customer that allows you to specify the frequency at the line item level. This means that you could sell a combination of one-time items, monthly plans, quarterly service calls, etc...all on one invoice! This is a huge improvement on the native GP functionality which forces you to select the frequency at the header level. In addition, we also support metered items, so if your billable amount will depend on an external factor, such as the number of support calls, or the amount of GB consumed, these amounts can be imported into the system, and used to calculate the invoice.
Invoice Generation
Once a contract has been set up, there’s no need to remember who needs to be billed and when; the system handles it all for you. When it’s time to prepare an invoice run, you simply go to the Invoice Creator screen, and create your batch, and our product will generate all of the required SOP Invoices, whether it’s 10, 100, or even 10,000. Contracts can be setup with an auto-renew capability, resulting in a true evergreen billing system, and eliminating the risk of revenue leakage.
Deferred Revenue
If you sell any sort of annual maintenance or warranty with your products and services, that amount obviously can’t be recognized as revenue upfront, but that’s where another aspect of our product comes into play: Revenue and Expense Deferrals. You can setup a recognition schedule for specific items, which will most commonly be 12 months Straight Line. For example, if you bill an annual service contract for $1200, our product will automatically create a 12 month deferral schedule of $100/month for the next year. Unlike native GP, we do not post this upfront, but rather it will post them when needed, so you don’t have to open/post to future periods. We can also handle more complex scenarios such as Milestone/Percentage of Completion schedules - these are most commonly used with Professional Services engagements.
Reporting
Do away with all of your Excel reports tracking your revenue streams! We include several reports to automate this process, most notably our MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue) report, which provides an overview of your new sales, upgrades/downgrades, and customer churn. Additionally there are deferral balances and waterfall reports which give you (and your auditors) insight into exactly what makes up your current deferred revenue balances, and shows how they will be converted to revenue over the life of the contract.
When you are ready to improve your current Billing and Rev Rec processes, please contact me and I’d be glad to setup a discovery call to see if our product would be a good fit.
Brian Morris
Account Manager – Binary Stream
With 15 years of experience in the ERP space, as a publisher, reseller and ISV, Brian loves to help organizations unlock their full potential via technology and training.